Archive for April, 2008

Yesterday, I stumbled upon another blog and website written by a Greek Muslim. I am amazed at the level of intellectual conversations about the Qur’an that is presented in this blog. Check out this interview for a glimpse of the inimitable Qur’an explained. You can also visit his website, www.theinimitablequran.com.

When I turned 20, things changed. I did the partying thing for a while so that wasn’t new to me, but I started to ponder about life again. I haven’t really done that since I was six when I distinctively remember looking up to the sky and wondering how we got here and why we were all here on Earth.

For the first time, really, I was asking questions like, “What’s the purpose of all of this? Why are we here? How are we supposed to follow God? Or, is life a big party?” It was this internal turmoil that kept nagging at me so I finally became interested in the Greek church again. Actually, I became obsessive with it. I started going to church a few times a week. Yeah… that’s a lot considering all the others my age were out partying all the time. During the weeknights, I was one of the only young people in the entire church!

I started reading the bible again, like actually, sitting down starting from the beginning. I don’t know many young Greeks doing that these days. But I wanted to know the truth. I was obsessed with finding out the truth. … and eventually I did find it. I’ll tell you how it did it later.

My worst fights with my mom were on Sunday mornings – right before church. My mom would wake me up in hopes that I would go with her to the Greek church but I was a teenager, and by that point, I got really tired of going and not understanding anything.

I mean, it was strange, because up until my teen years, I was always a good kid. I loved going to Sunday school every week and I loved school. When I was young, I begged my mom to let me go to Greek school in the after-school program. But, during my teenage years, I just couldn’t stand going to church. What was the point? They spoke ‘ancient’ Greek in the sermon so I didn’t really understand it and it just seemed all too ritualistic that it didn’t relate to my life whatsoever. And besides, everyone knows that the women go there just to gossip. It doesn’t matter which city or country you live in. It’s the same everywhere.

What’s so sad though, is that this isn’t just what happened to me. There are thousands, if not millions of people that go through the same thing I did.

Next post, I plan to talk about what happened when I got into my twenties. You’ll be surprised so stay tuned…

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Greek Muslims more and more. We ARE out there, but where? Every once in a while, I either get an e-mail from a Greek Muslim I’ve never met before or I’ll receive a notice about a new youtube video create by a Greek Muslim. The thing I hate though, is that I try to save all of this stuff in one place but I end up forgetting where it all is.

What’s this blog for?

So, I decided to first start a blog for Greek Muslims, if nothing else, where I can collect all of the videos, books, articles etc. about Greek Muslims and post it in ONE place. That’s the purpose of this blog.

So, what’s the benefit?

When I first converted to Islam, I wish I had a place to go to online to find out that 1) there ARE other Greek Muslims and 2) connect with them. And so, the benefit of this blog is that this is the online place to find it all.

We’ll try our best to keep you updated with all the new videos, articles etc. we find and also try to post up some reflections of what it means to be a Greek Muslim and some of the hardships you might run into with your family.